WiFi hotspots provide pubic WLAN access in many locations such as airports, hotels, coffee shops, etc. Multiple hotspot providers may provide overlapping service coverage in these areas. Roaming agreements may exist between different service providers. End users need to be aware of these roaming agreements and other available services to select the appropriate service provider and take advantage of different services offered.
The embodiments of the invention relate to methodology whereby WiFi enabled devices can automatically select the appropriate service provider, thereby taking advantage of different services offered by different service providers.
Related art for WLAN network/service discovery relies on manual user intervention to identify capabilities or services offered at any hotspot. In the absence of any advertisement mechanism, users will have to first associate with the hotspot, if they can, and determine the capabilities through manual exploration and manual entry, which is error prone and very difficult to do from small form factor devices (apart from battery drain and longer times to connect). Embodiments of the invention provide mechanisms for making the capability and service advertisement available during pre-association phase to WLAN hotspot which a mobile station (“STA”) can use when discovering the service and selecting the network that offers the preferred capabilities.